


Take to the Sea

by talesofstories



Category: Fairy Tail
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pirate, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-16
Updated: 2017-12-02
Packaged: 2018-08-22 20:39:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 19,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8300206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/talesofstories/pseuds/talesofstories
Summary: The long-standing consensus was that the women of Fairy Tail were terrifying. Unfortunately for everyone else who travelled the seas, Fairy Tail’s crew was composed solely of women.





	1. Gentlemen, Welcome to Fairy Tail

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An introduction to the all-female pirate ship and the beginning of a jailbreak.

The scarlet-haired pirate neatly sidestepped the wild swing directed her way, knocked her opponent unconscious with a swift hit to his head with the hilt of her sword, and swung around to block the two men coming behind her as the ship she now stood on shuddered with the impact of the most recent cannon volley. _They always get too confident when faced with a woman_ , she thought drily. _No matter the stories they’ve heard about us or the damage they’ve watched us inflict on their comrades, they always assume that they will be the ones to beat the weak, impudent women._

The ship began sinking twenty minutes later. Everyone the pirates of _Fairy Tail_ wouldn’t be ransoming—most of the ship’s sailors as well as some servants who had practically begged to be separated from their masters—had been put in lifeboats with plenty of provisions. They had received instructions on the direction to take to reach a nearby island that was large enough to have its own bustling port, and the captain of the pirate vessel now stood in front of those few men who remained.

“Gentlemen, welcome to _Fairy Tail_.” The smile and arm gesture accompanying those words implied welcome, but the cold glint in the pirate captain’s eyes belied that implication. “You will be staying with us for a few days, and we are grateful to be blessed with your _illustrious_ personages.” A few weak-willed nobles began to shake at the threat hidden behind that one stressed word; even the admiral of the royal navy who had joined them on their journey to attend the wedding of the prince in a neighboring country felt traces of fear as he glanced again at her unforgiving eyes before dropping his own to the twin swords strapped to her hips. “Letters will be sent out shortly to inform your king of your current situation. Until we learn from him what he wishes done with you—whether you will be ransomed or left to our tender ministrations—you will stay as our guests below decks. I hope, for your sakes, that he remembers you fondly.”

A curt nod to the crewmembers standing behind the prisoners instigated the removal of the prisoners to cells below deck. The captain watched until the last head had disappeared before turning to a petite blue-haired pirate: “Send out those letters as soon as possible. While I can’t begrudge our extra haul, entertaining a collection of pampered lords was not part of our plan, and I would hate it if waiting upon an improperly curled wig interrupted the rescue mission.”

A cheeky grin burst upon the petite girl’s face at her captain’s growled words. “That lord’s wig truly was awful. I bet his servant was glad to get away from him and it. No worries, though, Captain; I’ll get the word out right away. Admiral Lahar alone is worth ransoming, not to mention Duke Leiji and Lord Michello, and if he’s rescuing those three I’m sure at least one advisor will say that the king might as well ransom the others. It would simply look bad if he didn’t arrange for the return of all twelve of them.” With that, Levy, _Fairy Tail_ ’s strategist and their resident expert at writing a ransom note that was just threatening enough to get an immediate response without being so threatening that it resulted in violent retribution, walked away, leaving Captain Erza Scarlet staring out at sea, scarlet hair dancing in the wind, as she considered again the port city that, after three weeks of staying away to let the uproar die down, swift winds were racing them to.

* * *

Footsteps moved lightly across the flagstone floor, following the route to the heart of the dungeons with unerring confidence. She had never been inside this dungeon before— _left at this corridor_ —but her information— _down this flight of stairs and another left_ —had been uncommonly good.

The kingdom really should consider not allowing men who couldn’t hold their liquor to act as their guards. They lost so many precious items due to this mistake.

According to the guard she had spent the last two weeks flirting with at a local bar, the cells should be just ahead. Warm torchlight spilled in front of her as she cautiously took one last turn and found herself in a hallway filled with iron bars that separated her from the sleeping prisoners. Knowing she didn’t have much time before the guards came back for their rounds, she quickly walked forward, scanning for the “pretty blonde wench with the devil’s own glare” the guard had told her was there, shuddering theatrically and truthfully before slurring his way into song. Three cells from the end, she found her.

“Juvia is glad to see you again, First Mate.”

Lucy smiled at her shipmate as Juvia pulled out a collection of keys. “And I’m glad to see you.” Her smile turned into a smirk as the cell door creaked open and her neighbors stirred. Glancing at the keys in her companion’s hand, Lucy practically read Juvia’s mind as she asked, “How much trouble do you think we can create before the guards come back? Their next round is in twenty minutes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no idea where this is going, but I'm excited for it! However, the lack of a clearly thought-out plot means updates probably won't be as regular as I'd like. Oh well, such is life.
> 
> The idea for an all-female crew came from tsukithewolf's fun Promises of the Sea: http://archiveofourown.org/works/4128409. All other plot ideas are my own (although, obviously the concept of Fairy Tail and its characters are Hiro Mashima's), but I'll try to sneak in moments from Fairy Tail when possible. Enjoy!


	2. Jail Break

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Juvia's rescue of Lucy goes as planned, minus the fact that he never figured into her plans.

When working, Juvia had a certain look to her eyes that promised her victims the world. The promise was always empty. A true siren, she always received far more than she gave. As _Fairy Tail_ ’s spy, she would stop at ports where they didn’t already have contacts and learn what she could, often joining ships as a passenger. After learning the identities of those aboard the ship and any precious cargo they might be carrying, Juvia would contact _Fairy Tail_ before beginning her favorite part of her work: silently causing enough trouble to make the ship and its treasures an easy haul for the pirates. On occasion, she would even enter more noble halls than the belly of a ship, getting more information with a shy smile and a tender look than the men she manipulated ever dreamed.

With the exception of her previous master, she had never had this much trouble getting a man to do what she wanted before. The man four cells down from Lucy who had been taken in for indecent exposure more than a week ago, though, seemed immune to her charm and refused to move; it was starting to annoy her. Did he like being half-naked in a dank dungeon, or was he just an idiot?

“Fine,” she seethed before beginning to walk away in a huff. “Stay here and enjoy the king’s accommodations for you. Do you think they’ll remember you before the end of the year?” Under her previous master, she shared no emotions except those ones manufactured by the necessity of the moment. Under _Fairy Tail_ ’s flag, her wooden façade had cracked, showing the exuberantly sweet girl underneath. Unlike her captain, whose temper was notorious although never directed at a member of her crew, it took effort to make Juvia angry. But it had been three weeks of planning this escape. Three weeks of being chatted up and felt up by grotesque men, squeezing details out of their booze-sodden brains as if they were rags, and she knew she and Lucy had to let as many other prisoners who wouldn’t do actual damage to the city’s people free as possible, otherwise it would cause comment that the only prisoner to escape was the blonde girl who had punched a man whose hands had been a bit too free in the marketplace and who turned out to be minor nobleman who had wanted to escape his grand house without full regalia. That didn’t prevent him from taking three body guards with him on his pleasure jaunt though, and Lucy found herself being dragged from the side of Aries, her informant in this city who promptly, albeit with much trembling, had sent word to the pirates that their first mate had been taken. After three weeks, Juvia was finally here to get her friend back, and they couldn’t allow people to notice her escape and start to wonder about the pretty blonde with the oddly calloused hands; it had to be a large-scale jailbreak, and yet this half-naked _imbecile_ refused to escape.

It didn’t help her mood that he was a gorgeous half-naked imbecile. Not that she was ever going to let him know that. But why couldn’t the pretty ones ever come along quietly and do her bidding with the same complacency the ugly ones did? Men!

The sound of two blades clashing stopped her churning thoughts and caused her to run towards the exit. Before beginning their rescue mission, she had passed Lucy a sword and a hood to cover her striking hair—Juvia was nothing if not thorough—and Lucy had been leading the prisoners to freedom while Juvia tried coaxing the last prisoner out of his cell. Someone must have come across them, the guards must have started on their next round a few minutes early, she had to get there.

Echoing footsteps behind her said that the prisoner had finally decided to stop being such an ass and follow her. _Good. Now Juvia can leave without having the pretty one on Juvia’s conscience_. Turning a final corner, Juvia saw the commotion: three guards had stopped Lucy and her group just in front of the stairs. Normally, Lucy would have had no problem with three men, but with the terror of the prisoners and the fact that one guard had stayed on the stairs to keep the high ground, she was having a difficult time. Slipping silently through the commotion, Juvia attacked the guard furthest from the knot’s center, leaving Lucy with the guard on the stairs and one who had been parrying her sword thrusts surprisingly poorly. _It’s like they don’t even train their guards; no wonder they spend all their off-duty hours getting sloshed in bars_. After disarming and knocking down her guard, Juvia turned to choose her new opponent when she realized there wasn’t one. A fist fight between the annoying convict and the guard who couldn’t use a sword to save his life showed how Lucy managed to have the time to defeat the guard on the stairs who now lay in a bloody, unconscious heap at the base of them.

“Where did you find him?” Lucy asked appreciatively into Juvia’s ear as they watched the imbecile pummel the guard. Juvia bristled a bit at her tone but couldn’t argue with it; she was too busy being appreciative herself at the way he dodged under what could have been a damaging blow from the guard’s sword before sending two punches to the other man’s gut. The way he _moved_. He was pulverizing the other man, but he did it with as much nonchalance as if he were . . . as if he were . . . and his eyes were such a deep, dark shade and looking at her like . . .

“Are you okay?”

Those eyes had been looking at her because she had been _staring at him_. The fight had _ended_ and yet she couldn’t stop _gawking_ like some love-sick teenager— Panicking, Juvia was only aware of the blush staining her cheeks and how nice his toned chest looked in the flickering light. “Ju-Juvia is, Juvia is—”

Her crewmate, hearing the conversation, turned away from the prisoners she had begun herding again towards the exit to look at Juvia in concern for a moment. Juvia’s blushing face and furiously averted eyes told everything, though.

“She’s fine. Shall we get out of here?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Every Gruvia moment is dedicated to my best friend. They are her ship, and I am more than willing to write fluff for her. I also want to write Gray so that he's more obvious in his attraction for Juvia than she is--a bit of a reversal there seems like fun and it fits the theme better that she would be wary of men and not throw herself at Gray in this world--so wish me luck!


	3. Finders Keepers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He had made a lot of stupid decisions before, but stowing away on an all-female pirate ship was by far the most dumb thing he had ever done. And holy shit but the redhead was scary.

The _Fairy Tail_ had slipped silently into port and had left just as silently. The ship was practically a ghost with how silently it moved; before long, their figurehead was pointing back out at open sea, and if anyone had looked at her at the time, they would have sworn the grin gracing Mavis’s face was larger than usual. As much as the crewmembers loved their figurehead and all that she represented—the first woman to take to the seas and not disguise herself as a boy, Mavis had become a captain at a surprisingly young age due to her strategic abilities—the celebration at Lucy and Juvia’s return kept them all far too busy to notice her.

The celebration kept them far too busy to notice anything until the next morning when Cana had gone below deck to grab a bottle to keep her company before checking on their cannons. Before Bisca had left to marry the man she had loved for years, she had taught Cana everything she knew about being a gunner, and while Cana knew she was nowhere near Bisca’s level—no one was near Bisca’s level—she was still pretty damn good at her job. So when she saw the mess of ammunition—Did a drunk buffalo waltz through here last night?— _pissed_ didn’t even begin to describe her feelings. Five seconds away from bawling out whoever had dared make that mess, she stopped her angry march to the ladder leading above when she heard something shift behind her.

_What the—?_

She punched him hard in the abdomen—a gentle wakeup call from Cana the women on the ship could have assured him if they had witnessed it—before grabbing his head to look him in the eye. Her grin turned devilish as she looked at him. “A stowaway? Ah, pretty boy, we’re going to have fun with you.”

* * *

She had dumped him unceremoniously on the deck, the brown-haired, buxom devil who had found him, and women seemed to pop out from everywhere as they gathered around him, laughing, sighing, frowning with annoyance, talking loudly about what they could do with him. He felt a fool, and all because a girl who wasn’t even here now had caught his eye. _Damn_. A commanding tread caught his ear, and he turned with trepidation toward the sound. Oh. There she was. With the blonde and a redhead whose look said nothing good boded for his future. _Shit_.

“You!” The squeak came from the bluenette from last night. Her eyes seemed larger than her face, and a light blush dusted her face. _Maybe this won’t be too bad after all . . ._

“Juvia? You know this man? Explain,” came the redhead’s command.

She turned her eyes from him with alacrity, her formal report indicating that the redhead was her superior: “Juvia released him last night along with other prisoners during her rescue of First Mate. He helped us when guards attacked; we wouldn’t have been able to escape so quickly if it hadn’t been for him.”

The blonde—their first mate, he realized—added, “He must have followed us after the other passengers dispersed.”

The redhead’s eyes shot daggers at him: “He also must have been quite careful to follow the two of you. This is the first time you have ever been tracked.”

Her voice was low, but the trio had come so close now and he was straining hard enough to hear every breath of conversation that he caught the blonde’s murmured “Bold move. I can only imagine what his _incentive_ must be to come after us” and the sly look tossed towards her blushing crewmember. The brunette who had found him snorted, but before he could consider how obvious he must be that these women caught on so quickly, the redhead captured his attention.

“Who are you, and why are you here?

The force of her stare caused his brain to fumble, a needle skipping on a record, before he answered: “My name is Gray Fullbuster, and I, uh, needed to escape that town.”

“Really?” The blonde chimed in. “The punishment for indecent exposure is so severe you decided to skip town by stowing away on a pirate ship? Wow, Hargeon has become strict since my last visit.”

Before he could die of embarrassment that his crime— _Not really a crime_ , he amended mentally, _some people are just prudes_ —had been confessed to a shipload of strange women, his brain latched onto her words. “Pirate ship?”

This time the brunette behind him laughed outright. “What did you think the _Fairy Tail_ was, a floating beauty pageant? It’s a good thing you’re pretty, Fullbuster.”

“Wait, _this_ is the _Fairy Tail_?” He looked with dread at the redhead. He’d heard tales. The pirate ship and her crew were known for not killing, but they were also known for being cunning and ruthless; no ship that crossed her path ever escaped. That women totally comprised her crew didn’t make them any less terrifying. And there was only one redhead on the crew, the captain Erza Scarlet. A monster, some people said.

“Yes, you are on the pirate ship _Fairy Tail_. A ship that does not take stowaways lightly, especially male ones. So the question is, What do we do with you, Mr. Fullbuster?”

Juvia looked away from him at that, and Gray could feel his insides quaking. Every word the captain had said had landed in his ears with more deadly force than its predecessor. Following after Juvia had been a foolish idea, he had known that from the beginning, but he hadn’t realized how damned idiotic and reckless he had been until—

“Captain, how long until we reach our next port?” The voice came from another bluenette off to his left, a bluenette who he could have sworn had given the blonde a broad wink before their captain’s eyes moved to her.

“About two months. You know that though. Why?”

“We can’t go back to Hargeon now, and since we won’t be near land, we’ll just have to keep him with us . . .” Her voice trailed off as the blonde, Lucy, picked up. “And I, for one, have always wanted a cabin boy to order around. Since Juvia’s duties won’t be too heavy while we’re at sea, she could easily keep an eye on him and prevent mischief. So Erza, what do you say, can we keep him?”

All eyes were on the captain with one exception: Juvia stared at Gray’s face as if to memorize him before he went to the execution block. After a long moment, Erza exhaled noisily. “It’s either that or we keep him locked up, and this way we can keep the cells empty in case we run across any more ships. But,” here her glare turned icy again, “if you do anything to harm any of my crew or betray us, I will personally destroy you. Understood?”

“A-aye, C-c-captain.”

“Juvia, you’ll be in charge of him for the duration of his stay, if that is okay with you.” Did her eyes get even bigger before she nodded? And why were the brunette, blonde, and other bluenette looking so pleased? “Report to me if any problems arise.”

“Yes, Captain.”

The brunette behind him cheered before turning to Juvia. “Can I borrow our new toy from you later, doll? He made a mess of the ammunition, and I am not fixing that by myself.”

“Yes, Cana, of course. Juvia will bring Cabin Boy to Cana once Juvia has shown Cabin Boy the ship.”

“Thanks!” She gave Gray a hearty shove towards Juvia before turning to leave with the other bluenette: “Poor Mira missed everything! Should we go tell her about these new developments?”

How concerned should those giggles make him?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tomorrow's election is filling me with a creeping sense of dread, so the solution for this evening is tea and fanfiction. Also, grocery shopping, because if we can't eat our feelings how else will we make the world okay again?
> 
> Whatever is paralyzing you today, I hope you're finding solace in stories and wonderful people. The world, for all its heartaches, is a pretty wonderful place, and I'm glad you're here.


	4. Untold Stories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There might be more to these pirates than, well, piracy. But what?

They had quickly decided that he couldn’t spend time on a pirate ship without being able to properly defend himself. True, Gray’s hand-fighting skills were nothing to laugh at, but when the first mate easily disarmed him seconds after their sparring match began, the pirates silently and unanimously decided he needed training.

“We can’t have our cabin boy getting skewered the first time some idiots from a royal navy decide to try and attack our ship,” the captain had growled at him when he had foolishly questioned her decision to train someone only a step above being their prisoner, and the deadly aura emanating from her as she spoke killed any further protests.

The women took turns training him during their breaks between shifts. When he wasn’t getting his ass handed to him by women who a few short weeks ago he would have deemed too delicate to handle a sword—the cook, who seemed pretty angelic especially when compared with some of the other women on the ship, was an absolute _demon_ when using a broadsword—he swabbed decks, mended sails, peeled potatoes, coiled rope, moved heavy barrels, helped stand lookout . . . In short, anything and everything anyone might ask him to do. It wasn’t too bad; sometimes Juvia gave him sword-fighting lessons or was in charge of him. Her mystery intrigued him, and he enjoyed more than he would ever admit the time he got to spend near her even though she had the odd habit of calling him only “Cabin Boy.” In fact, it was a bit odd how she kept him at arm’s length even though the other crewmembers seemed to have grown pretty accepting of him. Hell, Lucy and Cana practically felt like sisters to him. . . .

Gray was considering the mystery of what the hell had happened to his life, why he wasn’t more upset about it, and how much the bluenette had to do with why he wasn’t upset as he scrubbed the deck for what felt like the millionth time when a small giggle behind him interrupted his thoughts.

“You’re muttering to yourself. You know that, right?” Gray turned to see Wendy, the blue-haired girl who acted as the ship’s physician for some reason he had yet to determine, standing behind him, a white cat in her arms.

“Uh, yeah,” came his sheepish reply, hoping Juvia’s name hadn’t slipped from his lips while she had been listening. “It’s just a little odd getting used to all this.”

The girl tilted her head thoughtfully. “Well, you’ve only been with us, what, a month? It takes a little while to get used to _Fairy Tail_. I know it took me a bit, and I didn’t have to do all the work and go through all the training Erza’s giving you.”

Was the cat glaring at him? Could cats glare? “Tell me about it. She sure is a scary woman.”

The giggle came again. “She is, but she’s also really nice when you get to know her. So’s everyone on the ship.”

Gray’s thoughts flitted to another blue-haired woman, remembering her pleas that he escape with her and the shock he had when he realized he was fighting a prison guard not to aid his own escape but to keep the man away from her. Nodding perhaps too enthusiastically in agreement with Wendy’s statements in order to bring his thoughts back to the girl in front of him, he asked a question that had been on his mind since meeting her: “How did you get to be part of this crew, anyway?”

“Umm, well, I was on a ship _Fairy Tail_ attacked.” She glanced shyly at him. “When Erza and Lucy learned I didn’t have any parents, they added me to the crew. I don’t think they expected me to do a lot of work for the ship, but I got along real well with Porlyusica—well, as well as anyone got along with her—and she started teaching me. She was the ship physician for _Fairy Tail_. When she decided she’d had enough of being around people, even tolerable people like the girls of _Fairy Tail_ —she could be really cranky—she retired to an island and I became the physician. She’s kinda like my mom, so whenever we go near there I visit her.”

 _That actually kinda makes sense_ , Gray thought. _But that still doesn’t answer . . ._ “But why did they take you off the ship you were on? Did they take anyone else?”

The cat in Wendy’s arms began glaring even harder at him as Wendy squeaked and looked aside: “Well, ummm, you see—”

“If you’re asking why we’re part of the crew, I’m here scouring the world in search for my dead-beat dad,” an airy voice broke in. Gray and Wendy turned to see Cana. “Levy’s looking for you, doll. Said something about wanting to know what herbs and things the infirmary needed so we can plot a course accordingly if we have to find any of them ourselves.”

The bluenette immediately perked up. “Sure!” She turned after walking a few steps away: “Talk to you later, Gray.”

“Word of advice, stripper?” Gray turned to Cana, who kept her eyes on Wendy as the girl left—her usual skip muted to a more sedate walk—even as the murmured words were directed at the man next to her. “There are a lot of stories on this ship; many of them aren’t happy, and most of those unhappy stories have a man at the root of them. If you don’t want to find yourself on a dinghy in the middle of the ocean”—and here she turned the full force of her scowl on him—“don’t press for those stories. Some of us aren’t so willing to share.”

Gray gulped. “Umm . . . what?”

His companion sighed and looked away, this time out at the sea. “Everyone asks why we do this, why women would forgo the joys of domesticity”—she snorted and rolled her eyes, conveying to Gray in those brief gestures more about what she thought about those so-called joys than any words could—“for a pirate ship. The simple answer? Freedom. The longer answer?” Cana took a swig from the bottle in her hand before continuing. “There isn’t a woman on this ship who hasn’t been hurt. Some more than others, but we’re all in the same boat on this. So we look out for each other, and we look for others who need us. I’m sure you’ve heard the tales of how we kidnap women.” Gray had, but he sure as hell hadn’t ever planned to ask about _that_ piece of gossip. “It’s true. One of the few rumors about us that are. But we only take women in need of rescuing, women who’ve been handed shit their entire lives and been forced to make something out of it. We take them with us and take care of them until they can take care of themselves. Along the way, they learn what it feels like to have a family and be valued. Some join us permanently. Some leave and make a new life for themselves. Wendy decided to stay. Just because we look like we have it together, just because _Wendy_ looks like she has it together, doesn’t mean we don’t have demons. It’s frankly a miracle that Erza allowed you to stay with us; don’t risk it by dragging our demons into the light simply to satisfy your curiosity.”

Cana walked away from Gray, who felt as though he’d just been punched in the gut. Multiple times. _What has that little girl been through?_ “Oh, and stripper?” He felt the threatening glitter of furious eyes on him again. “We’ve all seen the looks you’ve shot at Juvia. If you drag her demons out of her against her will or do anything to hurt her, we will make you wish Erza had tossed you overboard the second she laid eyes on you. That’s a promise.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cana is my favorite minor Fairy Tail member, hands down. She's bold and brassy yet has far more fun than Erza or Mira, and I'm jealous of her ability to drink anyone under the table. Which means she's going to be a fairly major part of this story because that's the beauty of fanfiction. You know what they say about writers*: "Phenomenal cosmic powers, itty-bitty living space."
> 
> And don't worry; more background stories are coming. ;)
> 
> *Genies, specifically the one from Aladdin


	5. Fall for Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meeting with Loke generally results in surprises. This time, one of the surprises is handsome.

The first time he had ever seen her, she was wearing a silver velvet dress that managed to both hug her curves and have a daring slit up the side while somehow not coming across as too sexy for the event. The slight green sheen darting across the dress highlighted her figure even more, emphasizing with it the warmth of eyes that, when turned on you, could cause you to spill any secret. A masquerade ball, she had refused to share her name despite his stratagems—his coy questions, smoldering glances, and teasing questions failing him for the first time. So he could perhaps be forgiven for taking the colors and fabric of her dress and fashioning them into a nickname: Lady Moth. Even when he knew better—knew that she had the glow of a star and would streak through his life as if she were of the shooting variety—the name stuck. Thanks to Loke, one corner of the world knew Lucy as Lady Moth.

“Which is ridiculous,” the Moth groused to her best friend, “because now I have this, this _aesthetic_ I have to keep up.”

Levy giggled. “You really don’t have to, Lu. Secretly, you just enjoy dressing up, don’t you?”

Lucy smiled as she finished tying a velvet choker, the only bit of that type of material she had chosen for the day’s outing, around her neck. “Well if I’m going to trade in comfortable pants for a fancy dress then I might as well look as good as possible, and velvet is so cozy, although a bit warm for this time of year.” She twirled gently in front of her friend, the A-line skirt on her dress flaring out before she grasped it with gloved hands and dipped into a curtsy. “M’lady Levy,” Lucy began, mimicking the simpering noblewomen whose only goal of chasing after rich men fueled her spite for them, “I am heartbroken to say that I must leave you now, but spending this time with you has been a dream come true. I trust that I may have the pleasure again soon?”

Valiantly holding back her mirth while her friend batted her eyelashes up at her, Levy sighed in her most gracious tones: “If you must leave then I would hate to hold you back. But I’ll expect to hear back from you soon, and,” dropping out of her elegant façade, she grinned at the blonde, “I want to hear _all_ the details.”

* * *

Scoring Loke—a minor nobleman with an ear for gossip, a suave manner that could ingratiate him with anyone, and a gift for being either the center of attention or little more than furniture in a room depending upon his mood—as a source at the masquerade ball now so long ago had been a real coup. That he had turned into a good, albeit flirtatious, friend only made her happier about the decision to dance so often with him that night. _However_ , Lucy sighed internally as his hand squeezed her waist possessively, _his friendship doesn’t prevent him from being an absolute ass at times._

They had agreed to meet at a museum gala this time. The town where Loke lived held the only art museum in the country, and it gave Lady Moth a chance to be seen in public with the impeccable Lord Loke while Mirajane, _Fairy Tail_ ’s cook who had an uncanny ability to masquerade as any of the crewmembers, pretended to be the infamous blonde pirate in a nearby town. Usually Loke was a model gentleman, but today he had opted to stand a little closer than normal, touching her more frequently than usual. She sipped from the champagne Loke had snagged for her and looked with interest at the painting in front of her, focusing on his words while pointedly ignoring his advances. _The flirt._

“It’s from Duke Everlou’s collection. I didn’t realize he had interests other than his books, but they say he has expanded his interests since he bought out the Zaleon estate,” Loke gently murmured in her ear.

“Really?”

“Oh yes. He’s a fascinating man, the duke. I’d offer to introduce you, but he will be out of town for the duration of your visit. They say he left to acquire more . . . valuables—he is a collector, you know—from some sources he has out east. The mansion is quite deserted. Pity he isn’t around so you can visit the mansion; some of the things he has are quite rare and have fascinating, if sometimes unseemly, stories behind them. . . .”

They moved to the next painting as Loke continued to describe the mansion and Everlou’s character, dropping gentle allusions to the questionable manner in which Everlou had obtained most of his wealth and his title while a plan for infiltrating the Everlou mansion blossomed in Lucy’s mind—

_Whack!_            

Startled out of her reverie and forced out of Loke’s arm just as they had turned to enter the museum’s next room, Lucy found herself being caught by someone who had barreled into her from the other room, a pink-haired someone whose quick reflexes had prevented her from crashing onto the floor and had instead cradled her gently in warm arms. Whose charcoal eyes were mesmerizing in the brief glimpses she had of them, and whose surprised “Oh, shit” on impact still managed to sound husky and attractive. Whose hands were working desperately to keep her balanced—not knowing that she spent most of her life balancing against the swell and strain of the sea and could therefore more than handle staying upright even when unceremoniously rammed into—while he tried to regain his footing.

Loke’s dry drawl interrupted her thoughts the moment the pair became stable: “I wondered when the catastrophe would come. It was too quiet here, considering you were invited, Natsu.”

The grin Natsu sent her escort was _dazzlingly_. Ugh. _Get a grip, Lucy; you’re a bloody pirate. Men who apparently cause catastrophes on a regular basis have no right to make your heart race._

“May I present Lord Natsu Dragneel, son of the late Lord Igneel Dragneel? Natsu, this is Lady Moth.”

Natsu grinned broadly and tugged at the scarf around his neck before sticking his hand out at her. Lucy held out her hand, gracious words of welcome on the tip of her tongue for when he would kiss her hand lost when he unexpectedly grabbed at her hand and shook it heartily. The grin that settled across her face at his enthusiastic words of greeting was a far cry from the gentle, fake smiles she broke into so often at these events. Only when Loke began to speak again did she find herself snapped out of the shock at actually being treated like a person rather than arm candy at one of these events, her mind racing under the current of conversation to place these names in the social order of Fiore. Igneel Dragneel, the war hero. The advisor to the old king who wasn’t corrupt, who couldn’t be corrupted no matter how hard, so the rumors said, others tried. The lord who took care of his vassals and who was actually adored by them. The lord whose riches came at the grace of the king because heaven knows he never sent soldiers out to ransack in his name. The lord who died on a battlefield and whose death was mourned universally. And this was his son, a passionate and fiery man who cared deeply but was as useless as his father when it came to acquiring wealth.

They talked only briefly before Loke moved her along, and she pushed all thoughts of him aside to focus on the mustering of ships the gossips were whispering about, a mustering that would hopefully deal with the pirate scourge once and for all, even those hussies on the _Fairy Tail_ who called themselves pirates. Even as she added her disapproval of the _Fairy Tail_ pirates to the conversation, she promised herself that once she made it back to the ship and reported to Erza, she would pull those thoughts of the pink-haired man out of the corner of her mind. Levy was going to get a far more interesting tale than any she had foreseen.

* * *

He couldn’t help but watch as the idiot led her from room to room and group to group, introducing her here, laughing with her there, always returning to her side after being pulled away by his many admirers. _Damn prick. What’s he doing flirting when he’s got a girl like that with him?_ He stayed in the same rooms as she did, listening for her laugh and murmured comments. Odd, he could swear that most of her smiles weren’t genuine. That spark in her eyes could only be anger, so why was she smiling at the leering old man currently slobbering over her hand? In the brief moments he had held her, he had felt the strength in her, so why was she shrinking into Loke when two men get into a heated discussion over her head? That laugh he knew was forced; Captain Straight only said the most sexist things, and he could see her white-knuckled grip around the champagne flute from across the room.

As Loke draped her wrap around her and they left the museum, the final question he had about the mystery that was Lady Moth whispered in his ear: If she was a moth and he was flame, why was he the one being drawn to her, rather than the other way around?

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Sigh* I love love. So far, this is my favorite chapter. Mystery, glances across crowded rooms, beautiful dresses . . . I am a simple woman, and these are the things that make me happy. And by "happy" read: "a melted puddle of goo."


	6. Freedom, and the Will to Fight for It

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes life feels as though it is closing in on you. The thing about being a pirate, though, is that you never let those walls succeed in caging you.

Dance lessons. Piano lessons. History lessons. Deportment lessons.

Her schedule was oppressively strict; if you knew her schedule you knew where to find her at any given time. However, unless you came with a message from her father, you never dared to interrupt a lesson.

French lessons. German lessons. Italian lessons. Spanish lessons.

It helped that her teachers were all excellent. While frequently exhausted, she was never bored. They also tried to make their lessons as entertaining as possible. They knew that their pupil was the rare student who worked harder than her teachers.

Literature lessons. Writing lessons. Singing lessons. Equestrian lessons.

She had wanted to study the violin, but “a lady’s hands can never have calluses on them.” She studied the piano instead. She learned to love the instrument and forgot her longing for the violin.

Discussions of current events found themselves squeezed in as she briskly moved to the next lesson. A lesson on the etiquette of wielding a fan occurred one rainy evening. A lapdog had been given to her the year all fashionable ladies had them as companions; two years later the dogs were no longer fashionable. The dog was summarily removed from her chambers.

At sixteen the suitors began pouring in. A betrothal couldn’t occur until after her eighteenth year, but it was never too soon to start fluttering around her hips and, more importantly, ingratiating themselves with her father. If her mother had lived, these men would have perhaps been pushed off until later years. Her mother had died young, though, and so they fluttered, hoping to snatch the only heir to the kingdom of Fiore.

At exactly the age of eighteen years, seven months, and twenty-three days, her engagement was announced.

At exactly the age of eighteen years, seven months, and twenty-eight days, Princess Lucy Heartfilia disappeared.

Three years later, she still hadn’t been found.

* * *

“It’s official? King Jude will be sending his fleet out to rid the sea of pirates?”

“Yes, Erza. All the information Juvia has acquired has only confirmed what First Mate’s sources told her. King Jude will send them out; we just don’t know when yet.”

“Loke told me that Admiral Jose Porlea will be their leader. He’s not the brightest, but he can be vicious. Once he gets his teeth in something, he doesn’t let go and he will often drain his victims before turning them over. He’s a bit of a lecher, too.”

“That sounds like a pleasant combination, Lu—a vampire and a bulldog.”

“Any ball he couldn’t make was always my favorite ball.”

“I will not allow this man to besmirch any maiden here!” The captain’s eyes blazed with the first fire since she had called select crew members to talk. Lucy, Juvia, and Levy all sprawled around their captain’s quarters, the casual postures and Lucy and Levy’s banter doing little to mask the tension in the air. “Levy, what do we know about this fleet?”

“The core fleet contains twelve ships. Smaller contingents report to this fleet, so it is possible for that number to grow up to thirty ships. The speed, manpower, and firepower varies between the ships; last word we had, _Fairy Tail_ could outrun all of them. We can outgun, at my best estimate, approximately one-third of the ships.”

“And Porlea?”

“Porlea’s a demon,” interrupted Juvia. “Porlea doesn’t have much loyalty to the king, but Porlea will do whatever King Jude commands until Porlea gets a better offer.”

Lucy reached over to rest her hand on Juvia’s shoulder. With the exception of Cana—currently keeping an eye on Gray and the alcohol—and Mirajane—in the galley cleaning and gossiping with her sister—the three women in the cabin with Juvia were the only ones on the ship her truly knew her past. Juvia had worked for Porlea, and he had trained her to be ruthless and cunning, a tool he could manipulate to keep his men in line and to get the information necessary to be a good lapdog to the king. She had caused destruction to rain down upon Porlea’s enemies, often taking both their secrets and their lives at his command; in return, he had abused her, keeping her chained to him by convincing her she needed him to be effective. Porlea had tried using her to go after _Fairy Tail_. It was the only time she failed a mission. Lucy had beaten her before opening her arms to the woman. Any thoughts of refusing Lucy’s offer to join the pirate crew had flown out of her head as she watched Erza take down the man who had joined Juvia on her mission. Aria’s defeat had been brutal, but the warm smile gracing Erza’s face when she turned to Juvia told her that these pirates could be family, that with these women she could perhaps be Juvia.

“It’s safer, I think,” Levy murmured, “to assume we will have to confront Porlea and his men. We can evade them for as long as possible in order to prepare, but a plan of avoidance will only end in our destruction.”

Lucy nodded her agreement. “The rumors generally start a few months before any action occurs; in this case, I would give us six months before the fleet can properly be mustered.”

“We shall have to prepare then.” Erza glared at a map of the waters around Fiore for a minute before speaking again. “The first action is to alert the crew of the possible danger so that anyone who wants to leave can have that chance. We’ll then want to take the ship ashore to make some repairs and update our weapons. Levy, you can go to that blacksmith to take care of that. He doesn’t look like he wants to strangle you quite as much as he does the rest of us. We’ll want to share this information with other crews, see what allies we can get. Juvia, I’ll entrust this to you. We cannot take the fleet on all at once, but we can perhaps pick off small parts of it until we get to Porlea.”

The plans continued from there. Suggestions, rebuttals, and schemes tossed into the confined space as heads leaned over maps and studied Levy’s rough calculations. It wasn’t until Lucy, Levy, and Juvia were getting up to leave that Levy asked, “And what do we do with Gray? He stayed on even after we made landfall.”

Everyone missed how still Juvia became as Erza slowly answered. “We give him the same offer we give everyone else; stay and risk Porlea or leave with our love and blessing. He’s become a good fighter, so I would hate for him to leave, but he’s not part of our family. It wouldn’t be fair to drag him into anything.”

The women nodded as Juvia exhaled slowly and slipped out of the cabin. She wished he would leave. She wished he would never leave her side. He had helped her free Lucy, but could she trust him with her family? For that matter, could she trust any man with her family?

* * *

“Lucy?”

“Yes, Erza?”

“I know you’re scheduled to meet with some of your informants, but while we’re close to Fiore it might be best for you to stay close to the ship. This hunt your father has begun probably has nothing to do with you, but I would hate to put you in unnecessary danger or add any fuel to his fire by letting him realize that you’re here with us.”

“Of course, Captain. I’m supposed to meet with Virgo when we next make landfall. Do you think that meeting will be worthwhile? She generally has really good information, and we’ll be far enough from the capital that it’s doubtful I’ll be recognized.”

“Yes, that should be fine. After that meeting though, we’ll have to rely on other sources of information. We can’t risk losing anyone right now.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know inconsistent posting is annoying (sorry guys!), but I like to think it's not as annoying as the fact that (spoiler alert for the manga) we still don't know how Zeref managed to have a kid. I've rejected every theory I've thought up as to how that's possible, and as thrilled as I am that we're now learning about Eileen, if we don't get an answer to the Zeref-procreation question soon, my head might explode.
> 
> However, if I don't post again for the next few weeks, happy holidays, everyone! I hope this season is full of mistletoe and laughter, music and family (related or self-created), as well as delicious food and time to relax for all of you. Most especially I hope that you get to spend time with the people you love or, at the very least, that you read a few great books.


	7. A Girl Worth Fighting For

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> War is brewing, but why focus on that when there's romance to consider?

Barely a third of the deck lay between him and freedom, and he couldn’t seem to muster up the energy to care. Mopping the deck— _swabbing the deck_ , he mentally corrected—at a snail’s pace, Gray considered the weeks that had passed. After two fights, one against a merchant ship that resulted in a nice haul for the pirates and another against a slave ship that resulted in taking the former slaves to a port city and leaving the battered and bruised slavers for the local authorities to deal with, he felt almost part of the crew despite knowing little of the crew members’ histories or how _Fairy Tail_ had even been conceived. Since the second fight, though, couldn’t stop mulling the two fights over in his mind. One had been almost friendly—hell, after confiscating all their valuables Cana had ended up sharing her much-loved booze with the merchant’s sailors, and he swore that at least three of the men were making eyes at Mirajane even as they fought her—while the other had been brutal—as soon as the slave ship had reached their sights, a silent, cold-blooded fury had swept over the crew, and they attacked with the clean efficiency of a surgeon removing diseased tissue. Mirajane’s eyes had glowed with a practically demonic light, Juvia’s sword threw sparks, and Erza . . . He suppressed a shudder and silently swore to never cross the woman.

The fights were so different; it had felt as though two different crews had been involved. But which represented _Fairy Tail_? The first’s lighthearted efficiency or the brutal competence of the second . . . ?

“Cabin Boy seems awfully serious. Is something worrying him?”

Juvia had sidled up next to him and leaned against the ship’s railing, hand against her cheek, eyes fixed upon him with an inscrutable expression. _She’s good at that look_ , he internally sighed. His thoughts flew wildly away from pirates to one of his best friends, a playboy who, were he here, would at this moment likely sigh, “O, that I were a glove upon that hand that I might touch that cheek!” The line had worked for him every time excepting once, when a blonde whose name he didn’t know and whom he couldn’t expunge from his thoughts had smiled slightly and leaned forward just enough to make his heart race before murmuring, “The thought is nice, but perhaps next time choose a play in which the lovers don’t die,” and walking away. Gray had howled when Loke had told him this story; it was nice seeing the player discomfited at his own game—

“Cabin Boy?”

“Oh, uh, sorry.” _What is it about her that makes me so tongue-tied? I used to be so cool before meeting her, before joining this crew._ “I was, uh, just trying to figure you out.”

Her brow wrinkled. “You were trying to figure Juvia out?”

He hastily backtracked: “I meant the crew.”

“Oh. Can Juvia help?”

And faced with wide blue eyes, words poured out of him. Or would have, but words were never much to pour out of Gray to begin with and considering how this woman stripped away all his coolness, the words stuttered out of him with excruciating slowness and inefficiency as he tried to explain his confusion at comparing the fights.

Juvia smiled when he finished. “ _Fairy Tail_ is both. Usually we pirate for fun, but sometimes we need to be more serious. . . . Have you ever heard the captain’s story?”

Gray waited for her to start speaking again when she trailed off, but he never expected that question to follow her pause. “No.”

“It’s an open secret on the ship, but renegade soldiers and slave traders overran Erza’s village when she was a child. They forced her and other children to work on building a tower. She eventually escaped, but she couldn’t take any of her friends there with her. When she created the _Fairy Tail_ , she did it to prevent others from being caged like she once was, to give us a home, to help people who can’t get help in more traditional ways. First Mate helped her for . . . similar reasons. So when we come across slave ships, it tends to be tense.”

He spoke before he could remember Cana’s warning: “What caged you?”

He remembered the moment Juvia’s face clouded and she turned away from him to look at the sea. _Cana is going to_ murder _me_ , Gray thought as he watched the emotions play across her unusually open face.

“Juvia once had to work for a man,” she quietly confessed. “He wasn’t very nice.”

Gray looked at her for a moment and then, heart in his throat, reached his hand out to cover hers. Juvia glanced up at him, and Gray watched the surprise dart across her features before she smiled shyly at him and turned her hand over to hold onto him.

_Cana’s going to murder me, but at least I’ll die happy_.

* * *

 

The next day, Erza mustered the crew. Lips tightly compressed, she explained what they were facing: the king’s plan for the systematic dissolution of piracy by force, what they faced in both Porlea and the royal fleet, their plans for reaching out to other pirate crews, and the time-table they expected all this to happen on.

Gray had managed to stand next to Juvia—not all on his own accord; two white-haired women who winked conspiratorially when they saw him angling for a spot near her played a large part in him reaching that spot to Juvia’s left before anyone else could stand there, although they planned to leave both parties in the dark as to the extent of their interference until he and Juvia had become the parents of at least one child, maybe two—and he couldn’t help glancing over at her carefully neutral face every few moments. He knew this was bad, that anything threatening her family would make her furious but also, deep down inside, terrify her, but he couldn’t tell which part of this news was the worst for her. Gray would have assumed that the size of the fleet mustered against them—a size they could only guess at and hope for the best—would be the worst part of this news, but the slight intake of breath at Porlea’s name made him wonder.

“In three days’ time we will be making port. If any of you cannot war against the crown, please let me or Lucy know. You joined _Fairy Tail_ for freedom, and that means you can come and go as you please. We care about you and want what is best for you, and if you need to leave us we understand.”

Juvia looked firmly ahead, refusing to look to her left even though she could feel his eyes on her. She was concerned for the crew, for her family, but the thought beat steadily in her mind: _What will he do? What will he do?_

Her years of training under a brutal teacher were all that prevented her from starting with surprise when his hand reached out to clasp hers; no training in the world could prevent the small smile that quickly danced on and off her face as she realized Gray wasn’t going anywhere.

Gray caught the smile, though, and an answering grin shot across his face as he looked straight ahead at the life he had chosen to fight for.

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If your older brother, like mine, loved Mulan and watched it all the time when you were a kid, you'll recognize this chapter title as a song that is now stuck in my head (you'll also recognize it if you or someone else loved Mulan, but this is the story I'm going with right now). Once again, this Gruvia chapter is dedicated to my best friend, who absolutely loved it when she read the first draft of this chapter and should love it more now as I added a few things before posting (you're welcome, best friend).
> 
> Also, for all of you who aren't best friend, thank you so much for reading and kudos-ing and for being all-around excellent people! It's nice knowing that other people enjoy this, or, at least, that other people are as desperate for Pirate AUs. They really are a lot of fun.


	8. Independent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes--not often, but sometimes--long, exhausting searches can be fruitful. And Gajeel is a hunk.

Hard-headedness had always been one of his most defining traits. His father had tried to break him of it—it went deeper than simple stubbornness and could result in him doggedly determining to do or not do something, refusing to accept or understand something staring him in the face. Despite his best efforts, though, his father had failed, and _annoying as hell_ didn’t begin to describe how any and every authority figure in his life found this streak in him.

Lord Natsu Dragneel never concerned himself too much with what other people thought of him.

His hard-headedness served him well when he decided to search for the Lady Moth. It wasn’t so much a decision, actually, as an instinct, a knowledge that he had to find this woman whose luminous eyes kept smiling up at him in his mind. His father had once told him that he would one day find someone who would constantly fill his thoughts and, when that happened, he had to make sure to not let that person get away from him. Three days after meeting her Natsu handed control of his lands over to Lord Makarov, one of his father’s best friends, and went to find the only person who seemed to know anything about her: Loke.

Who refused to tell him anything.

So he punched him.

Natsu won the fight.

Eventually.

But, and this was the most annoying part, Loke still refused to tell him anything. He could see in Loke’s eyes that the ginger-haired playboy was keeping things from him, but he only shared the briefest details: that “Lady Moth” wasn’t her real name, that he wasn’t sure what her real name was, that he didn’t know where she lived (something about Loke’s smirk when he said “I honestly don’t know where she lives” made him grind his teeth), that he only ever saw her a few times each year, that he didn’t know how to get in touch with her as she always contacted him . . .

“Fine. Guess I’ll have to go find her on my own.” Natsu had been holding the other man up against the wall by his shirt collar, but now he let him slump down to the floor as he suddenly released Loke and turned to leave. He had almost reached the door before Loke’s voice turned him around again: “Be careful as you search for her. If she is who I sometimes wonder . . . well, then there are other people searching for her. People who will not treat her well if they find her.” He looked up at the pink-haired man, eyes fierce with the desire to protect the mysterious woman whom he considered a friend and who had earned his complete devotion. “Do not put her in any more danger than she already is by drawing attention to her.”

* * *

Their giggles wouldn’t have been too noticeable, but they were nearing the blacksmith’s shop, located in a part of town usually not frequented by ladies, and Levy’s giggles at Lucy’s sly comments about a certain acquaintance of theirs only became louder as they neared the smithy.

“You know it’s dangerous around here for women, right?” The low growl cut through their laughter as the girls found themselves only a few feet in front of the voice’s owner, a tall, muscular man with too-long black hair tied back in a ponytail, gleaming red eyes, a face covered in piercings, and sleeves rolled up, ostensibly in order to keep loose fabric away from his hands but also serving to emphasize his strong hands and, as Levy once confided to Lucy after Cana had pushed gin on her a few too many times, “the most delicious forearms that were ever attached to a real man and not a character in a book.” There had been a lot of giggles in that confession, too.

Lucy glanced at her companion before fluttering her eyelashes toward the brooding man, hoping to get a rise out of her friend. “We do, but we also know that you would always protect us. Right, Gajeel?”

He merely grunted, never taking his eyes off the shorter woman, who had gone red the minute his voice had scattered her thoughts and who could only desperately hope that he hadn’t overheard anything Lu had said. “Like the two of you need me to protect you.”

“Well, you never know, Levy might be involved so involved in a book and not even notice a robber until he tried to take her reading material from her.”

That earned Lucy a roll of Levy’s eyes before the bluenette looked for the first time directly at the handsome man in front of them. Placing her hand on her hips—Lucy noted with interest the way Gajeel’s eyes followed the move before snapping back to her face—she announced, “You’re right; we can take care of ourselves. However, we do need a favor from you. Can we talk inside?”

A curt nod and a step away from the doorway answered her question, and Levy strode forward purposefully. “Coming, Lu?”

The blonde shook her head: “Thanks, but I’ll have to leave you two alone. I’ll be back in a few hours though, and if you need me, you know where to find me.” Levy nodded as Lucy flashed a farewell grin at the two of them and turned to walk away. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!”

Gajeel had no idea why the Shrimp turned such a deep red at Blondie’s comment or why he could feel his own face become suffused in a rich shade of pink.

* * *

He had travelled practically everywhere. The one thing he knew about her was that she was a lady—no one who hadn’t suffered through years of training in etiquette could have flowed so easy through conversations and society even with Loke at her side—hand so he visited the courts and palaces and estates where one usually found ladies.

She wasn’t there.

He knew she didn’t have connections with any of the locations he had grown up in, otherwise he would have met her long ago. But then again, he hadn’t really been part of court life as a child—he had no interest, and his father knew his enthusiastic son would have caused disaster during tedious days with the court, which also provided Igneel a convenient excuse to spend as little time there as possible—so maybe she did have connections but their paths had never crossed?

Perhaps she was the missing princess.

Missing princesses don’t simply turn up at afternoon gatherings with muckety-mucks.

Or she could be a ghost. A ghost who somehow managed to feel solid and have a smile that sent lightning dancing up his spine.

It could happen.

He had managed to get lost in the unsavory side of a port city, an area where his mystery woman _definitely_ would never find herself, when a glint of gold caught his eye. The glint couldn’t possibly belong to her, yet he couldn’t stop himself from following it and the small woman at her side as they chattered their way deeper into the seedy side of town. He was straining to hear anything more distinct than the blonde’s low tones and the bluenette’s increasingly loud laughter when the most terrifying-looking man he had ever seen interrupted the girls’ progress, and he had once met the royal executioners during their off hours. The Garou Knights weren’t that bad, but their single-minded devotion to killing whomever the king set them upon gave most people who met them the willies at best. This man, though—

 _Shit. They’re going to get themselves killed by him_. _Or worse._

A minute ago he had been trying to convince himself to stop stalking the women and go find someplace to eat. Now he was preparing to break in and fight the man off— _How long do I have to wait before I can break in? Does he actually have to attack them first? Can I protect both of them? When they start screaming, will anyone arrive to help them?_ —when the women started casually chatting with him. The wind was further knocked out of his chivalry when the smaller one began walking forward— _Is that lunkhead_ blushing _?_ —and he saw the sign above the doorway he had initially missed: _Oh. This jerk’s the blacksmith. Wait, why would they need a—?_

Just at that moment the blonde turned around, casually waving back at her companion and the man who looked as though he wrestled wolverines in his spare time, and he caught sight of her face for the first time.

It was her.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It is a truth universally acknowledged that Gajeel is a hunk. Even if it doesn't actually count as chapter summary, I wanted everyone to be clear as to where I stood on this important point. He is also every short girls' dream (I once had a tall friend complain to me that short women always got the tall men; I maintain that at least one person in a relationship should be able to reach high cupboards without having to risk death by climbing on various surfaces not designed for helping people reach heights, and so I ignored her complaints), and I love Gajeel and Levy together. Which means I'll just have to figure out a way to get them together more in this. Wish me luck!


	9. Just Out of Reach

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As if it weren't bad enough that the world is large and heavily populated, some people are really concerned by how close Natsu is getting to answering a mystery.

It was her, and she was weird.

First a blacksmith, and now a pub. Not that he had anything against pubs, but generally the women who found themselves attached to Loke’s arms wouldn’t even know what a pub was let alone enter one as seedy as this one. It wasn’t the worst one he’d been in—that honor would always be reserved for a dive his father and Makarov had taken him to once, a place they had discovered ten years ago on the long trudge back from a military campaign and that, Makarov had brightly exclaimed, actually seemed a bit cleaner since Goldmine had taken ownership of it—but he couldn’t imagine why his mystery woman would ever want to come here unless she secretly did want to be kidnapped.

Then Natsu tried the food.

He hadn’t been expecting much, but he needed to eat. The woman had found a table off to one side and placed an order, so Natsu, unwilling to cross her path until she wandered to a more reputable part of town where she would be less likely to assume that he was trying to attack or solicit her, found one with a good view of her and followed suit. He practically forgot about her when the food arrived it smelled so good. He sent a hard look at the woman that tried to say “this is where I’ve left you, and this is where you’ll stay until I come back”—she didn’t seem interested in moving, though; she had pulled a notebook out of the bag she carried and was writing in it as she ate—and then dove in.

He hadn’t eaten this well since he found the place with the large, white-haired man who talked about how great his sisters were while he cooked and got smacked by the brown-haired waitress when he used the word “manly” too many times.

When Natsu thought to look up again, she was no longer alone. A woman with pink hair and who dressed like a waitress had joined her. The pinkette had a poker face fit to beat Makarov’s grandson, Laxus, but every thought the blonde had seemed to flit across her face.

Natsu had never been accused of being an intuitive guy, but even he could see that the blonde was worried.

He was so involved with watching her face and trying to listen to the conversation, he never realized that two pairs of eyes were watching him.

* * *

Nobody really knew who the twins’ parents were. They got by with a number of aunts and uncles—all of whom lived in different cities and came from different social classes and backgrounds, none of whom they were actually related to—whom they stayed with until they got bored and went to visit the next aunt or uncle. For two mischievous, blue-haired children, Gemi, a boy, and Mini, a girl, were good at blending into the background. They had learned from their uncle Loke how to do this; they learned a lot of things from their relatives, and these skills made their pranks that much more impressive.

Very few people could tell them apart, and they liked it that way. When an aunt had forced Gemi to cut his long hair, Mini had cut hers in solidarity. Their best pranks were pulled on people who didn’t realize there were two of them. However, they also loved the few people who always knew who each twin was whether they were together or not. Lucy was one of the few people who could always tell them apart—even most of their aunts and uncles were sometimes at a loss—and they loved her fiercely. So at Aunt Virgo’s request, they raced to the bad side of town to find the blacksmith whose cat they had once borrowed for a few days without letting him know and who they had decided they had better avoid for their rest of their lives once they thought to return Panther Lily. They burst into the smithy, pretended like they didn’t notice how close the blacksmith and the petite blue-haired woman were before both adults started backwards, and went up to the woman, trading off sentences fluidly:

“Aunt Virgo sent us.”

“There’s a man following Miss Lucy.”

“Miss Lucy told Aunt Virgo that he has been following her since she left you here.”

“Miss Lucy only has her daggers on her, and he has a sword.”

“Miss Lucy plans to take the long way back here.”

“She wants to corner him in an alley and learn why he’s following her.”

“Miss Lucy would like you nearby in case she needs help.”

“Will you help her, miss?”

Without waiting for Levy’s response, they turned to the hulking man:

“We’re sorry we borrowed your cat.”

“We didn’t mean to worry you.”

“Will you help Miss Lucy too?”

“Please?”

And faced with three pairs of eyes—two pairs pleading, one pair with a demand in them he instinctively knew that if he failed to meet would mean no more Shrimp lighting up his smithy with her chatter of books and stories from around the world—he reached for a broadsword to belt around his hips. “Like I’d let Blondie have all the fun taking out some pervert who stalks girls.”

* * *

If Natsu had stayed for a few minutes after the blonde had finished chatting, stood, sent a long look tinged with a smile to the darkness beyond his left shoulder—he cursed the way his heart sped up when he briefly thought he was the object of that affectionate gaze—and moved gracefully through the pub and into the night, he would have seen the twins cross the floor and go up to their aunt Virgo. He would have at least seen the twins if he had looked to see what had caught her attention beyond his shoulder, but he was much more interested in watching her face. So he never saw the two people who, after receiving their instructions, would make sure the blonde was snatched out of his grasp at just the moment when he thought he would learn her mystery.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a total tease and completely unnecessary, but I love the twins. And plot, unfortunately enough, is not my main focus. Whoops! *blows kiss and runs away*


	10. Tease

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Natsu finally, finally!, gets his hands on the mystery. Or, to be more precise, the mystery gets her hands on him.

The knife’s sharp edge startled him, she could tell. Or perhaps, she reflected, it was the realization that he hadn’t been as sneaky as he had thought. A part of her remained convinced that he was, at heart, an innocent goofball who probably thought he was a ninja or something else equally ridiculous. But a larger part of her knew that she could not trust a stranger, and a noble one at that, and she pressed the knife a little more firmly against his neck.

In order to be close enough to threaten him and yet still be in a position that favored her, Lucy had made a sharp turn into the alleys while he remained behind her. While waiting for the pink-haired man to catch up, she pulled herself up into a high, darkened windowsill. When he had turned into the alley he could have sworn she disappeared into, its dead end and startling lack of beautiful woman ripped a few choice curse words out of him. It was under the cover of this outburst that Lucy dropped almost silently behind him, positioned herself so that it would be difficult to grab her and that a swift upward jerk from her knee would remove all thoughts of his hands from his brain, and kissed her knife against the side of his throat. She preferred to keep a sword’s distance between herself and the men she confronted in these types of situations, but this would do in a pinch.

“Care to explain why you’re following me?” Lucy whispered against his ear.

And Natsu’s brain short-circuited. She was just so _close_ and she smelt so _good_ and what do you say to the woman who has haunted you for weeks after you’ve spent an evening following her and she is now pressing a knife against your throat in a dingy alleyway?

So really, for the sake of his ability to confidently look her in the eye the next time he faced her, it might have been best that their interview was interrupted.

* * *

After the princess disappeared, King Jude sent spies and armies out to find his missing daughter. Every man he sent out searched because it was the king’s order. Every man except one. The moment he saw her portrait, this man fell in love with the princess and vowed to find her again so his love could come home.

Captain Dan Straight had been looking for Lucy Heartfilia for many, many years.

* * *

“Bunny Girl, need any help with that?”

The pressure of the knife on his throat abated somewhat as she called back to the rumbling voice: “Aren’t you supposed to be flirting with Levy?”

“LU!” squeaked a scandalized female voice.

Her laugh tingled agreeably against the back of his neck, so agreeably that he almost didn’t fully note her reach her arms down and around him to unbuckle his sword belt and toss it to the man behind them.

Almost.

But with a knife still in her right hand and at least two people behind her willing to act in her defense, Natsu wasn’t going to take his chances. Not then. He had found her once. He could do it again.

Her voice dropped again to a whisper: “It’s been lovely dancing around you this evening, but next time, a more direct approach might work better, Natsu Dragneel.” She leaned forward just a hair more to brush her lips against his cheek before turning with a twirl of her dress: “We should get back. Keep an eye on him for us, will you, Gajeel?”

A heavy hand clamped down on Natsu’s shoulder. “Gihihi, it’d be my pleasure.”

She was gone again, and it felt as if his heart had left with her this time in addition to his dreams.

But wait, did she say _Gajeel_? As in—

* * *

“Are we going to talk about why you kissed him?” Levy glanced up at her taller friend as the two moved quickly back to their ship and tried not to revel too much in how the tables had turned in just a few brief hours.

“Nope. No we are not.”

Levy was quiet for a moment, and Lucy began to hope that maybe her friend would actually leave her alone.

No such luck.

“He was cute. If you like pink-haired men.”

“Says the girl whose crush is covered with piercings.”

“I guess it’s true what they say: there’s no accounting for taste.”

And for the first time since leaving the man to Gajeel’s not-so-tender mercies, Lucy slowed her breakneck pace to look at her friend, shooting her a wry grin. “We have the worst taste in men.”

Levy looked sly: “Yeah, we do, but if they ever admit they like us, we know they’ll never leave us.”

“Just because Gajeel likes you that doesn’t mean Lord Dragneel has any feelings for me.”

“Oh please, why else do you think he followed you? He doesn’t look like a spy; he looks like he would rather bust down a wall than quietly enter through a door. Look how poorly he did trying to follow you!”

“Give him some credit, Levy. He might have been decent; no one else noticed he was following me. I’m just much better at noticing spies than most spies are at being spies.”

Levy knew what Lucy referred to. Being first a member of the court and then a pirate had made Lucy very aware of everyone around her, especially those people who were paying attention to her. “Well, we’ll know more about him when Gajeel’s through with him. And didn’t you say you met him with Loke? Maybe you can charm some details out of him about your rose-haired romance.”

Lucy laughed at her: “With all that’s going on, do you think now is the best time to investigate cute boys?”

“No time like the present,” came the cheery response. “Besides, what was it you said before you left me with Gajeel? ‘You need a break from strategizing, and he looks like just the man to make you forget all your worries’? I bet your Natsu could make you forget all kinds of woes.”

“Levy! He’s not _my_ Natsu.”

“So you admit that he could make you forget your woes?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, fluff. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways...
> 
> What is better than fluff, though? Unfulfilled fluff! ;) That just means they'll get to meet again, again, and I'm sure it will be even more meaningful now that Gajeel and Natsu are going to get some bro-time.
> 
> And Dan Straight! He is ridiculous, I would hate to meet him in real life, but the scenes with him in them are the best scenes of the "Key of the Starry Heavens" arc. Especially the scene where he recounts his past loves with pictures. It gets me every time.
> 
> And for all of you who have put up with me and my very erratic posting schedule, I love you all. You're great. *blows kiss*


	11. Remember Me?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The world is both too large and too small--too large for Erza to find the other half of her heart, too small for Gray to get away from the biggest pain in his ass.

Scarlet hair tangled gently in the wind, but this was an occupational hazard of having long hair while making a living on the sea and Erza was so used to it she didn’t even notice. Another restless night had her in its grips, and she had relieved the lookout once she had finally given up on sleep. She had thought grimly about how at least someone should get some rest if she couldn’t as she climbed up to the crow’s nest and sent a softly understanding Juvia back to her bunk.

A storm brewed around them, and she felt so helpless, so _fucking weak_ in a way she hadn’t felt in _years_ , waiting for the storm to break, waiting for it to give her an enemy she could fight against rather than this tension that was driving her mad.

The last time . . .

The last time she had been small. One of many small slaves easily kept in line. They were so scared and so broken, but they had tried. They had tried; they had done their best.

It hadn’t been enough.

Memories flooded her mind, blocking the horizon line just becoming visible in the distance. Memories of noise, of confusion, of pain. Red colored her vision; smoke and haze rose in front of her. Her breath grew harsh as the memories swamped her: how she had rallied those small bodies, how they had failed. How she waited to die. How they sent her away.

How she never saw her friends again.

How she never saw him again.

They had sold her off. Too much work to break her; might as well get a good price for her.

She had escaped.

She had vowed to find them again, but she had no idea where they were.

By the time she had found that tower again, they were gone. Nothing remained but her memories of brutality lighted by cheeky grins, soft eyes, a brilliant blue.

She had failed.

* * *

As lost as she might be in her memories at that moment, Erza never allowed herself to be so lost that she missed anything happening around her. Even in the safety of her ship, surrounded by family, she remained a warrior. So when Gray disturbed her solitude by clambering up the rigging to join her on the crow’s nest, he saw rather less of her turbulent thoughts painted across her face than he would have if she was anyone else but also rather more of those thoughts than she usually allowed to be visible.

Well, he was part of the crew now, which meant he was _family_ , which meant that she could trust him with the vestiges of pain and memory that still painted her face.

It helped that she knew she still scared him.

“Everything okay, Captain?”

Everything wasn’t, so Erza chose to ignore the question. “What are you doing out here?”

“Same thing you are,” came the dry response. “Not worrying.”

Erza hummed in what could perhaps be construed as agreement, letting the conversation fall. Reports and gossip flew to her from spies and contacts in an ever increasing, dizzying pace. She already knew from Lucy’s stories and years of keeping the blonde hidden that King Jude, when once fixed on an idea, was intense, but the concern she first had when they learned of his plan to rid the sea of pirates had blossomed into—well, not a panic, she was _Erza_ after all, but a fear over how best to keep everyone safe, how to keep them all free.

She was also angry as hell that someone thought they could threaten her family.

* * *

Erza was stewing again. Three seconds after he had broken in upon her solitude, Gray had thought that perhaps he should have just left her alone, but by then it was too late. He could practically see the storm clouds whirl to become a dense fog around her. And he got it, kind of. He knew that _Fairy Tail_ was in trouble, but he had also watched as the women danced around naval crews as if taking down the ships of a country’s elite were nothing. Gray knew as well that Erza had been reaching out to other pirate crews—the crew were all cheery about this plan, except for a stony-faced horror that universally settled across their faces after a brief moment of almost girlish excitement when _Blue Pegasus_ was mentioned, for reasons no one would tell Gray. If they could do so much with just themselves, how could Erza possibly be worried about even Fiore’s fleet when they would have allies?

“It’s . . . complicated” came the response. _Shit, did I just say that out loud?_ “If this vendetta were coming from anywhere else, I would be concerned, but nothing more. But since it’s coming from Fiore . . .” Erza’s voice grew impossibly colder, “there are additional concerns.”

Gray waited a minute. And another. And while Erza was possibly the most terrifying person he had ever met, the mystery was killing him. He cleared his throat nervously. “Why does Fiore create additional concerns?”

Silence met his query, followed by a heavy sigh and another, “It’s . . . complicated.” _And that_ , he thought, drearily, _is all I’m going to get_.

“It’s just that we would hate for the king of Fiore to realize that his long-lost daughter and heir to the Fiore throne had found a home in the company of—what were the terms used in the royal pronouncement, Erza? oh yes—‘villainous scoundrels, disgusting layabouts, thieving lowlifes; the worthless scum that tars the best nations and breeds, to their shame, in their shadows.’” Gray turned to the new voice in surprise; he hadn’t heard anyone join them. His surprise deepened as the words clicked in his mind— _king_ , _daughter_ , _heir_ , _scum_ —and made connections between the familiar features of the woman in front of him—golden hair, brilliant smile, warm eyes, a woman he considered to be almost his sister after all the time they’ve spent together—and the features of a proud, stern man whose portrait adorned the interiors of public buildings and who was currently out for their heads.

_Oh_.

Lucy smiled at him as it finally dawned on him just who she was, as overheard conversations that had ended abruptly upon his appearance and that he had mostly forgotten finally made sense in his head. “It’s also a bit concerning that a nobleman from Fiore spent an entire evening the last time I was at port watching me. He did a very poor job, so we think he was following me for personal reasons, but the coincidence is concerning. Not as concerning as his hair, though; how is pink even natural . . . ?”

For the life of him, Gray couldn’t think of anything to say, and he allowed the last part of Lucy’s statement, the part she had mumbled as if thinking aloud and not actually for anyone else’s benefit, to only dimly register in the back of his head. Erza saved him the need of repsonding by clapping him in the middle of the back. “Well, now you know all our secrets. We are the reason the missing princess of Fiore has been missing all these years. Do you still like our odds against the king?”

Gray had prepared himself to look at the pirate captain with his usual stoicism, which would block the panic churning in his gut. But one part of Lucy’s mumbled words kept chiming more and more insistently in his mind, overriding even the shock of learning Lucy was a missing princess: “You said this nobleman had pink hair? Is it Natsu Dragneel?”

Eyes narrowed at him—one pair on his left, the other on his right, pinning him in place. “Yes. Talk.”

_That idiot is going to be the death of me_. “Well, the good news is he wouldn’t follow you for the king—I’m not even sure the idiot’s aware Fiore has a king and that as a noble he’s technically sworn to obey him.” The eyes kept pinning him, waiting for whatever was coming next. “The bad news is he also isn’t going to stop following you if that’s what he’s decided to do. He’s got a bit of a one-track mind.”

_And boy is that an understatement._

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have been low-level annoyed with all the authors of the fanfictions I'm following for not updating more often. In the middle of one internal grump-session, I realized I was the biggest hypocrite. So here you go! Everybody is meeting their important people, which means we'll be getting to the action soon.
> 
> And more Dan Straight. He hasn't been able to call for his Lu-Lu yet ;)


	12. I Can't Wait (to See You Again)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gajeel has a . . . complicated relationship with most people in that, excepting a few pirates, he doesn't like them. But time is moving swiftly.

Gajeel’s life had never been ordinary, not by a long shot. His dad had been the blacksmith for the only village attached to some lord’s holdings, and because the lord was really good at battle but not so great at the traditional stuffiness and class snobbery associated with nobility, he had spent a lot of time visiting with Gajeel’s dad. The lord had brought his son with him—a force of destruction and a menace with fire—and that’s how Gajeel practically became brothers with some obnoxious rich kid.

Then his dad had died and the lord died, and he couldn’t stay. Not in that place, not with those memories, not as a kid who couldn’t yet do the work of heating a forge and forcing metal to his will, not when everything was going to change.

He never liked to think about the years following his decision to leave. They passed in a haze of pain and anger that left him covered in scars.

He turned it around though. Well, to be honest, she turned it around. He refused to hurt the Shrimp again, and she took that intention and all the scraps from his life and made him who he was—a decent man, a slightly less terrible citizen, the best damn blacksmith in Fiore, and one of the few people who knew anything about the _Fairy Tail_ pirates, one of even fewer people who was trusted by them.

Hobnobbing with pirates and a wasted youth, though, hadn’t prepared him for this.

Gajeel’s life had never been ordinary, but as he dragged the man into his smithy and turned to see someone he hadn’t thought of in years, he realized it had never been this fucking nuts.

* * *

“Still no news?”

“Your majesty, my men and I have been following some new leads, one connecting your daughter to a man named—”

“I asked if you had news on my daughter, Captain Straight, not if you had any new fruitless leads.”

“Ah, well then,” the man shifted uncomfortably, “I have nothing to report, sir.”

“Then I am reassigning you.” _But—_ “As you undoubtedly know, the pirates invading our waters are getting too bold. In a month, Admiral Porlea will be leading the fleet to destroy them once and for all.” _But—_ “You and your crew will join him.” _But—_ “That is all, Captain.”

_But Princess LuLu needs me!_

* * *

He’d forgotten how annoying Flame Brain was.

But the man was now here in his smithy, his sanctuary from the stupidity of the world, and all Gajeel’s memories of wanting to punch him for being a nuisance when he just wanted to spend time with his dad came rushing back. The idiot had been silent, staring forlornly after the Shrimp and Bunny Girl the entire time it took Gajeel to drag him back to the smithy with him. But now that they were there, the younger man couldn’t seem to shut up. He talked about Gajeel, he had the good taste to be enamored by the smithy, but most of all, he asked about Bunny Girl.

How Gajeel knew her. What he knew of her. Who her friend was. How she and the friend met. Why he came with the friend to get her. Whether he would say her hair was pure gold or molten gold. Why she was here. How she knew how to use a knife. What her—

“Wait. Do you know nothing about Bunny Girl? Why are you following her? Have you been _stalking her_?”

He at least has the grace to look bashful. “I wouldn’t say _that_. I’m just . . . really interested? In everything about her?”

“Fuck,” Gajeel groans, not sure whether to laugh at the man in front of him or punch him for creeping on his girl’s best friend, “I leave you alone for a few years and you turn into a pervert. Great. The old man’s going to come back from the grave just to kill me.”

The brilliant grin comes out of nowhere. “If he hasn’t come back to kill you yet, this won’t do it. I’ve done way more stupid stuff than this.”

That finally gets a sharp bark of laughter out of Gajeel, right before he asks the other man how he is still even alive if pursuing a woman who managed to corner him in a dark alley with a knife isn’t even the dumbest thing he’s ever done. The grin keeps its megawatt brilliance for a “dumb luck, I guess” before “why do you call her Bunny Girl? What’s her real name?”

“You don’t even know Bunny Girl’s _name_?”

“Nope!” came the too-cheerful response.

Flame Brain was more of an idiot than he thought. And there was no way in hell Gajeel would give him a scrap of information about Bunny Girl. Or any of the other pirates.

But that doesn’t mean he can kick his old man’s friend’s idiotic kid out when he is clearly too stupid to think up a life plan that isn’t “search for some strange woman I don’t know and hope I can find her and learn her name.”

Besides, he could use an extra pair of hands in the smithy. The pirates needed a lot from him.

* * *

Three days after Flame Brain showed up to ruin Gajeel’s life, his damn cat appeared. He apparently learned everything his master knows—so, surprisingly little—and followed after the man following after an unknown woman. After three days of dealing with Flame Brain though, Gajeel can’t even work up the effort to be annoyed. Panther Lily put up with a blue tomcat, named Happy of all things, invading his territory surprisingly well, and that’s enough for Gajeel. Maybe living with Lucy’s twins for a few days made the cat immune to all surprises and annoyances. If that was the case, Gajeel almost wished the twins had kidnapped him. Flame Brain talking to his cat like they were best buds was _aggravating_.

* * *

Two weeks later, Virgo slipped into the smithy to share the news that the pirates were expected back in three days’ time to collect the weapons they had asked for when they had last made port. Gajeel nodded vaguely, half of his attention on the pink-haired menace currently stoking the flames of his forge. Virgo’s voice was a low murmur, there was no way the other man would be able to hear, but Gajeel still wanted to make sure he kept his distance until the woman left. Despite his badgering, Gajeel had made sure Flame Brain learned nothing more about Bunny Girl during the two weeks they had worked together, and he wasn’t going to let the creepy barmaid spill any hard-kept secrets.

Besides, he also needed to make sure the other man didn’t burn his livelihood to the ground.

“Everything will be ready when they arrive,” he responded as Virgo’s eyes turned to the man in front of them as well.

“And what about him? Is he a threat?”

“Gihihi, he’s an idiot with a crush on Bunny Girl. Doesn’t even know her name. He’s safe.”

Virgo watches him for another minute before turning to leave. “This arrived as well. It’s for you.” She slipped a piece of paper in Gajeel’s hand and left as silently as she came. He unfolded the scrap of paper and tried to will the light flush on his cheeks out of existence as he read the words written by a delicate hand he knew well: _See you soon, you big lunk._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please know that the title of this chapter came from a Miley Cyrus song back when she was still working for Disney. I'm not proud of this, but titling has never been my forte.
> 
> Not a lot happens in this chapter. But that just means that things will have to start happening soon. Right? Right.


	13. Getting Closer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Despite the pirates' efforts, Natsu starts to learn the truth.
> 
> Also, Gajevy.

Sitting across from him, all Levy could think was _He is so beautiful_.

Which is ridiculous, and Levy can obviously never share that thought with Gajeel as he would either be offended or tease her mercilessly—and honestly, the latter is far more likely and insufferable—but despite his rugged features, semi-permanent scowl, and numerous piercings winking at her in the light, _beautiful_ is the best word Levy can think of to describe the mass of contradictions sitting across from her.

He used to terrify her. Juvia wasn’t the only one Porlea had working for him, and Gajeel had once been ordered to brutally destroy the pirates. Instead, after nearly breaking Levy, he had been brutally destroyed by an enraged Erza. Like Juvia though, he had found himself saved by the pirates and leaving Porlea as quickly as possible to settle back into the familiar rhythms of a blacksmith’s shop. And Levy, somehow, had learned to not fear him.

It helped that he was a dork. That while he wasn’t nice, he was kind (and Levy loves this about language, loves that it allows her to mark the sharp divide between someone naturally sociable and someone who will glare at everyone while letting a precocious five-year-old named Asuka wrap him sweetly around her finger) (her heart might have melted a little at that) (or maybe a lot). That he looked back at his actions and was genuinely horrified, genuinely apologetic, genuinely willing to spend time slowly working at getting her to forgive him even as he gave her all the space she could ever need as she sorted through her complicated feelings for the man. And Levy started to notice how brilliant his humor was, how soft his eyes were when they glanced at her, how strong he was, how broad his shoulders were, how nice his forearms were . . .

She loved hi—

“Oy. Earth to the Shrimp. You there?”

She _hated_ how red she always flushed when she got called out for daydreaming.

“Gajeel! Of course I’m here. What do you want?”

“Gihihi, just wondering why you were petting my cat and staring outside with moony eyes when you could be petting and looking at me like that.”

Men are _impossible_.

* * *

They’re staying for only a few days, and a war is brewing, sharp and bloody, on the sea waiting in front of them. Even Cana treads more carefully across the deck, spends less time talking about the wine she has affectionately dubbed her boyfriend—“It will never leave me, and I will never do anything but enjoy it”—and more time making sure the ammunition stores contain everything they might need. Levy spends this time with Gajeel, quietly talking over her concerns as she keeps a wary eye on Natsu. They had reports—from Virgo, who simply passed on what Gajeel had said; from Loke, who mostly gave detailed explanations as to why he would make a terrible boyfriend but who also conceded that he was a decent person and unlikely to be working for anyone but himself; from Gray, who told stories that hinted at a rivalry that flourished during their teens based more upon begrudging respect than an actual dislike for the other—and as much as Levy trusted these reports, Lucy was her _best friend_. If Levy had anything to do with it, Natsu wouldn’t get another glimpse of his blonde obsession until she had decided he was worth Lucy’s time, upcoming war be damned.

Luckily, he seemed unaware of the intense scrutiny she bestowed on him from her seat beside Gajeel, focusing instead on arguing with his cat. Which, while weird, didn’t make him King Jude’s agent. More worrisome was that the cat seemed to be winning.

“Is he always like this?” Levy whispers to Gajeel from her perch, Panther Lily still firmly planted in her lap.

The man doesn’t even ask what she’s referring to, whether it be the half-argument they’re listening in on, whatever Natsu was doing with the fire, or the fact that he was very clearly not paying attention to anything around him besides the fire and the cat, giving weight to Gray’s claim about Natsu’s single-mindedness. Instead, he glances away from Levy for half a moment, looking at Natsu and dismissing him to keep a watchful eye on the bit of sunshine that had fallen into his smithy: “Yep.”

“So it is entirely possible that he’s chasing after Lu for no other reason than she caught his eye?”

“If you think Flame Brain does anything but he what he wants to do, you have a lot to learn about the idiot. Bunny Girl caught his eye, and he’ll chase after her until something shinier distracts him. Unless she’s the shiniest thing he can find, in which case, she’s gonna have to avoid him for the rest of her life.”

Thoughtful humming greets that statement, and Gajeel takes the pause as an invitation to the turn the conversation to something more concerning to him: “So, what are you gonna do about Porlea?”

* * *

Fairly certain that he had seen her with his mystery woman the last time he had found her, Natsu initially found himself immensely interested in the blue-haired woman who came by to visit Gajeel. But, well, _she_ wasn’t there, and all they did was sit as Gajeel desperately tried to think up pick-up lines (Natsu could practically see his brain work and then short-circuit every time the woman next to him smiled or laughed or breathed), and he got distracted. He could tell Happy was mocking him and someone had to keep an eye on the flames while Gajeel attempted to flirt, so he let their whispered conversation become just another background noise in the forge until “Bunny Girl caught his eye, and he’ll chase after her until something shinier distracts him”—true, but he’s a bit offended to here that Gajeel thinks he might get distracted from his all-consuming quest, last few weeks working with the man aside—“Unless she’s the shiniest thing he can find, in which case, she’s gonna have to avoid him for the rest of her life.” That’s more like it!

Although, that kind of makes him sound like a dragon hoarding treasure, and while he wouldn’t say it’s a _bad_ comparison, Natsu’s still not sure how he feels about it. He’s also not sure how he feels about how Gajeel’s conversation partner—whose name must be Levy as she has to be the woman he saw with his blonde—stares at him as if she could dissect him and see his true self if she just looked at him harder.

“So, what are you gonna do about Porlea?”

Gajeel’s face hardened into an ominous frown as Levy talked, telling about a planned meeting with other vessels, about the information they had collected, about how a woman named Juvia was out doing her best to cause as much silent damage as possible. But all that passed through his head without making much of an impression as Natsu’s brain was much too busy parsing one name and its bearing on the conversation: _Porlea_.

And that was a name he knew, a name he knew was currently connected with pirates, and for the life of him Natsu couldn’t understand why Gajeel would bring up Porlea when talking to his girl and ask her what she would do with the man, almost as if she was standing up against him, unless . . .

Scenes shot through his head.

A woman known as Lady Moth with Loke, hanging on his arm yet rejecting his advances, laughing coquettishly after a heartbeat of looking serious, almost as if a business meeting were happening under the guise of an afternoon’s flirtation.

The blonde and the bluenette walking through what was clearly a bad part of town with a casual confidence that most women he had met only had in a drawing room.

The blonde sitting across from a pinkette, murmuring in low tones and carefully keeping her face composed and blank, a pinkette he had later seen with Gajeel, who looked both gutted and gleeful as she left.

The blonde holding a knife to him, clearly confident, clearly capable, clearly a master of more than just public flirtations and negotiating bad parts of towns.

Gajeel, frantically working at his forge for the last weeks and demanding his help as the blacksmith churned out weapons of all sorts and answered Natsu’s queries as to who needed all this so quickly with a brusque “it’s for some friends.”

The woman sitting with Gajeel now and very delicately turning one of Gajeel’s knives over and over between her fingers even as one hand remains on the cat in her lap.

Porlea was seeking pirates.

Loke had said people were seeking the blonde.

He had managed to fall in love with a _pirate_.

If his dad were alive, Natsu knows he would never hear the end of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Levy, back with Lucy: "Gajeel is just so, so . . ."  
> Lucy: "So?"  
> Levy: "Frustrating!"  
> Lucy: "You're the one who likes him."  
> Levy: "Yeah, well Natsu loses arguments to his cat."
> 
> The road to true love never did run smoothly. I love these dorks.


	14. Alleyways, Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All Wendy wanted was some time away from the craziness that always surrounded her on the ship. If she knew she'd stumble into new craziness she might have left well enough alone.

Wendy had never been brave. She had instead always been meek, but even that had changed after her rescue by _Fairy Tail_. Wendy had nowhere else to go, and Porlyusica, the ship’s healer, both needed an assistant and reminded Wendy of her long-lost mom. So she stayed and learned absolutely everything, finding along the way a family in the pirate crew. Once Porlyusica deemed her training complete—the standard for completeness still being a complete mystery to Wendy as Porlyusica and her decisions were mercurial at best, downright confusing and nonsensical at worst, and the woman never explained anything unless forced to—she had retired, leaving Wendy in charge of the health and well-being of a ship full of unruly pirates who didn’t know when to stop fighting or drinking, the latter describing Cana more than anyone else.

And over the years as she stitched together sliced open skin and took up weapons herself, Wendy realized something: while she might not be able to be brave for herself, she could be brave for her friends. And while bravery meant facing your fears head-on in order to protect the ones you loved, she was also a pirate who had had it drilled into her head as well as every other crew member’s head by Erza that discretion was still the better part of valor. So when the evening’s conversation turned, courtesy of Cana, to “Can you believe that Lucy has never been on a date? The first mate of the pirate ship with the hottest and most amazing pirates, and she’s never even kissed a guy! I would have thought you’d be eager to get with a guy—pop that cherry, make yourself less valuable to dear old dad.”

Levy lay on the floor clutching at her sides as she laughed at Cana’s insinuations and Lucy’s spluttering as Mirajane looked slyly on when Wendy decided that she needed to be a few years older to listen to this conversation. Mumbling a brief “I’m going ashore,” she made a grab for Carla—who, considering the annoyed look she gave Wendy once she had found a new perch out of reach, had decided that while Wendy was definitely too young for the conversation, Carla herself was not—and began heading towards shore.

Gray stopped her before she could get off the ship, glancing nervously over his shoulder at the cackling women. “This is a bit of a rough area; you should probably have someone go with you.” Wendy gave him a deadpan look, long enough so that Gray knew she saw through his plan to run away but not so long that it would be rude, before nodding. Fifteen minutes later, Wendy was grateful she had allowed Gray to join in her craven escape as a body moving with speed ran into her, and if it weren’t for Gray’s quick reflexes, she would have found herself in a particularly unpleasant looking—even by the standards of towns with active ports—pile of street debris.

“Hey! Watch where you’re going!”

But she could do without the imminent fistfight.

“You watch where _you’re_ going!”

_Boys_.

“Wait, _Frosty_?!?” “ _Flamebrain_?!?”

That was . . . unexpected.

Wendy glanced between the men as they run through an entire pantomime of shock and something that seemed like it wanted to be happiness but could be constipation based upon all the grimaces and grunts that facial expression entailed. She began to wonder whether they knocked heads during Gray’s dramatic rescue of her when the other man burst forth with, “People said you had been murdered by pirates!” The statement came complete with wide, betrayed eyes and a finger pointing in accusation. Wendy wondered whether the man had ever considered trying for the stage.

Gray chuckled, his cool façade breaking only to glance briefly at Wendy. “Murdered by pirates is good. No one will look for me anymore after escaping prison.”

The other man’s mouth opened and closed a few times: “Why the _he_ —” His sharp gazed turned to Wendy; she saw the moment his brain told his mouth to switch tracks. “ _Heck_. Why the heck were you in jail?”

It was sweet, really, but ever since knowing Cana and Erza, Wendy had considered “hell” so minor as to not count as a swear word. And she couldn’t even begin to describe all the age-inappropriate filth she had picked up listening to Levy talk, filth Wendy could only blame on all the romance novels Levy absorbed while tucked away in a corner of the ship. Still though, it was sweet, and Wendy felt a bit of the warmth she reserved for her shipmates extend towards the man.

Gray shrugged. “Public nudity. Wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Pervert.”

“ _Hey_.” Oh lovely, they were back to the shouting. Maybe Wendy would have been better off staying on the ship and listening to the horrifying conversation of her shipmates. Maybe Wendy would have been better off flinging herself into the sea. “Watch who you’re calling a pervert! At least I’m not the one stalking girls!”

“Oh! You’re the one following Lucy?” She should have put it together earlier. She had heard Levy teasing Lucy about pink-haired men and checking whether that color was natural—for her first few months as a crew member they had reigned in their language around her, but eventually everyone had fallen back into old habits, which was both a compliment and incredibly horrifying—but only now did she think to put those comments together with the man standing in front of her whose hair really was a shocking and unique shade of pink.

The man practically pounced on her at those words—Wendy would later be very relieved only Gray was around to hear her surprised squeak as he wouldn’t tease her mercilessly about it unlike, say, Cana or Lisanna—and Gray moved, still maintaining his trademark cool, to stand a little closer, a little more protective, right behind her. “Um, hi?”

He brushed off her greeting. “How do you know I’ve been following someone? Do you know her? Is her name Lucy? Tell me everything you know.”

“Back off, Flamebrain. She doesn’t have to tell you anything she doesn’t want to.”

Wendy smiled shyly up at Gray. She was a _pirate_. She could _handle_ overly enthusiastic men. After all, Erza and Lucy had personally trained her, and none of her intensely protective crew members would have let her leave the ship without someone if they didn’t know that she could get herself out of most trouble. But it was still nice to know that if she didn’t feel like dealing with overly enthusiastic men, someone else would back her up and beat them up for her.

However, that didn’t mean she wanted to wait around while they brawled.

“Um, excuse me, maybe you should tell me about the girl you’re following, and I can let you know if she’s my friend?”

The man’s scowling face lit up as he turned to Wendy and launched immediately into an impromptu monologue on the many charms of his mystery woman, including topics ranging from the sound of her laughter to her ability to threaten a man to the fact that Gajeel refused to tell him why he called her “Bunny Girl” but that he would find out why if it was the last thing he did.

Gray gave Wendy a look at that last bit of information, a look that the other man luckily missed, which she responded to with a sharp grin. If Gray wanted to hear how Lucy had once snuck into a strip club disguised as a performer, complete with bunny ears and a soft cottontail, to keep a target busy while a few other pirates robbed him and before they kidnapped him with the help of Gajeel, who met Lucy for the first time that night and barely heard her name before choosing to ignore it entirely, he would have to ask someone else. Wendy could perform her part in these jobs, but she could never talk about them afterwards without turning a deep shade of red and tripping over every word. Instead of sharing, she let him continue for a few more minutes. When it became clear, though, that while he had run out of new details to give he would not be ending his Ode to the Beauty of the Mystery Lady any time soon, Wendy interrupted: “But why are you following this woman if you don’t even know her name?”

He gave her a look that clearly said he didn’t understand why she was asking such a ridiculous question. “Because she’s amazing, duh. Now, is she your friend or not?”

What should she say? “Yes, but my friend doesn’t know whether you’re a spy for her father so I probably shouldn’t say anything”? “Yes, but I’m still not convinced you’re not a creep”? “Yes, but it’s still really weird you’re following her and perhaps too much of a coincidence that you know Gajeel _and_ Gray”? She couldn’t say any of those things.

Luckily, she didn’t have to. Unluckily, it was because soldiers rounded the corner at that moment, and their leader, who remembered his time on _Fairy Tail_ as a captive very well, took one look at Wendy and her distinctive deep blue hair before shouting, “Halt! Pirates!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: "I need to finish the quilt I'm making for Mom. I'm debating what to watch. I'm thinking either Buffy season two--"
> 
> Best Friend: "Always a good choice."
> 
> Me: "--or some Fairy Tail so I get back into the story and can write the next chapter of my fanf--"
> 
> Best Friend: "DO THAT YES THAT."
> 
> And that, dear reader, is how I watched all of collection three one Saturday while quilting so that I could spend some time getting Wendy's voice in my head. It is also how I realized that Blue Pegasus is basically a glorified host club. Look into your heart; you know it to be true.
> 
> In completely unrelated news, a line from my favorite movie managed to sneak in here. So bonus points to anyone who catches it.


	15. On Running

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Seas and towns are only so large, and eventually people are always found.

When a princess disappeared, there were protocols in place for retrieving her.

Well, there was one, really: _get her back_.

When that princess was the only child of the king and his deceased queen, the protocol changed slightly to _GET HER BACK_. She was needed: if they couldn’t marry her off any ruler they tried to bring in would probably have a coup on his hands in no time; marrying off a princess was really the easiest way to get a new king if no princes had been born. Everyone knew that a country needed to be ruled by a strong king, otherwise it would quickly fall apart. (Everyone except the former queen, who had insisted that a woman could rule as well as a man, and it was for loudly holding this opinion that the royal advisors weren’t as heartbroken as they otherwise might have been that she had died after only bearing one child.)

And while King Jude’s spies and soldiers weren’t as terrifyingly efficient as, say, Alvarez’s, they weren’t incompetent buffoons, either. The fact that years went by without them turning up even a viable rumor about her whereabouts said more than any royal advisor cared to admit even as they quietly began discussions behind the king’s back about who could possibly take over the kingdom without violence occurring in the immediate aftermath. They needed to find someone weak enough to not be perceived as a threat but strong enough to rule, educated enough to lead but not so educated that he couldn’t be led himself.

Just when they were giving up hope, the whispers began. Hardly to be credited at first, they gained in volume the longer the women who helmed the pirate ship _Fairy Tail_ continued their unlawful action on the seas. A woman who looked an awful lot like the former queen, Layla Heartfilia, acted as their first mate. A fearless and cunning woman who could not be the former queen because, one, the former queen was dead and, two, she was younger than the queen had been at the time of her death. She would actually be the same age as Princess Lucy, but that was nothing more than a weird coincidence as everyone knew that Princess Lucy had requested she spend a few years at finishing schools in other countries to learn more about the customs of the countries she would one day rule beside. . . .

King Jude was deeply furious that his daughter had run away, and the only thing that he hated more than the conniving of his necessary but often untrustworthy advisors was the sheer amount of pirates haunting his oceans. So when the story that Princess Lucy had abandoned her royal duties for piracy elevated from impossible rumor to likely fact despite the efforts of his own team to spread gossip destroying the story, he immediately set out to accomplish two goals: get his ungrateful daughter back and wipe all pirates from the seas once and for all.

* * *

_Nothing,_ Gray mused as he found himself dragged by a small hand around his wrist through the streets of a town he had never been to before, _really prepares you for running from soldiers, but after you’ve done it once it’s always the same_. A low-hanging pub sign and a sharp left turn interrupted his philosophical thoughts for a moment, and just when he was about ready to begin them again Wendy shoved him through a tight doorway, through a dark room, and into a dark corner, where she slapped her hand over his mouth.

When they began their escape, his mind had slipped gratefully into the grooves of existential musings. Considering the nature of running from the law was easier than considering how he had reached a point where he was meeting an old friend—rival? What were they again?—with a petite pirate by his side while said friend pined after another pirate, a pirate Gray knew but couldn’t tell Natsu about without said pirate’s permission, and he knew all these pirates because he had met a third one, a brilliant, beautiful, enchanting one, and he had followed her without question . . .

Oh. He was whimpering. That would explain why Wendy had covered his mouth.

* * *

Later, Wendy would never be able to say how they made it back to Gajeel’s smithy; Wendy liked Gray, and he seemed to make Juvia happy—or something; Wendy really wasn’t sure what was going on between them, and based on the ship’s gossip, she wasn’t alone in this—but the man did not know how to run away. He seemed content to stand gaping like a fish when clearly he needed to run, which would explain why they had busted him out of one jail cell already.

_Maybe Erza had more than protecting the women of the ship in mind when she made_ Fairy Tail _a woman-only ship_ , Wendy sighed in her head as she slapped a hand over Gray’s mouth. _Boys have no sense._

They stayed at the smithy until the search calmed down. No matter how professional and keen for performing their duty the police were, when Gajeel came to his door at the behest of loud pounding and received a demand that he allow his smithy to be searched for pirates, his glowering disapproval took away their keen edge after only a brief search, one that didn’t even come close to touching the corner where Wendy and Gray crouched.

“They’re looking for pirates, huh?” Gajeel turned to look directly at their corner after verifying that the search party had truly left. “Wonder why they might be looking for those?”

“I can’t imagine why.” Wendy came out of the corner, tugging Gray behind her. “Thanks, Gajeel.”

Strong arms were folded around a burly chest, and an unimpressed eyebrow was raised at the man behind Wendy. “You wouldn’t have these problems if you didn’t hang with riff-raff.”

“Well, the other girls are pretty fond of him, so I have to keep an eye on him.”

Gajeel’s eyebrow lowered, taking the other one with it as his face transformed into its habitual scowl. “Which girls?”

And maybe Wendy had spent too much time around Cana, listened in on too many conversations between Levy and Lucy, been raised by sass and cheekiness and teasing far more than what is good for her naturally sweet nature, because she knew what he was angling for, or rather _who_ he was angling for, and she instead tipped her head innocently to the side and said, with the biggest eyes she could muster, “Why, all of us, of course.” And then she grabbed Gray again, informed Gajeel that they must sneak back to the ship now, and dashed into the night before her giggles could give her away.

Unfortunately, she was so busy exulting over Gajeel’s gobsmacked face, she completely missed the shadow that trailed them all the way home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi all. I hope you are well and safe and happy and that, if you find yourselves accidentally caught up in pirate life, you are better at it than Gray.


End file.
